Lyric Essentials: Caolan Madden reads “Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices” by Sylvia Plath.

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Caolan Madden reads “Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices” by Sylvia Plath.

Caolan, this is a really interesting, unique, and powerful poem you’ve read for us today. I’m sure Sylvia Plath needs no introduction, but what about this poem? Who are the three women?

Caolan: Three Women is a verse play that Plath wrote in 1962, not long after the birth of her second child. I had always kind of assumed it was a closet drama–a play that wasn’t meant to be performed–but it was apparently commissioned by the BBC and produced as a radio play in August of 1962, with three different actors voicing the three women. So the “three voices” were really three different voices, not three voices that you imagine inside your head, or three aspects of one voice like they are in my recording.

At the beginning of the poem, each of the three women is pregnant. (The setting for the play–the only stage direction–is “A Maternity Ward and round about.”) They go on to have three different experiences of hospital birth or miscarriage. The First Voice’s story is maybe the most familiar–it’s the kind of birth narrative that our culture, and even more so Plath’s 1960s Anglo-American culture, tends to celebrate: she gives birth to a baby boy and brings him home to the nursery she decorated for him. The Second Voice, a married woman who has been trying to conceive, has a miscarriage. The Third Voice, an unmarried college student, has a baby girl and gives her up for adoption. In the excerpt I read, which is from the very end of the poem, the women have all left the hospital and are starting their lives back up again, with or without children.

Chris: What made you decide to read this Plath piece above all her other poetry? What’s in this poem that makes it essential to you and your writing?

Caolan: Plath was the first poet I really loved–I first read her poems when I was thirteen, and for that reason she might be the only poet whose work I will ever love in this fundamental, visceral way. Obviously falling in love with Sylvia Plath at the age of thirteen is not an uncommon experience! But I wish more people were aware of the tenderness and humor and wonder in her work, as well as its fascinating, ambivalent relationship towards women’s popular culture. When people talk about, for example, Plath’s Mademoiselle internship or her desire to be the perfect housewife, they talk about these things as oppressive structures Plath had to strip away in order to become her true self, the avenging spirit of the Ariel poems. In reality that relationship is much more complicated and was, I think, much more generative than these narratives allow.

So that’s one reason I didn’t pick a really famous Plath poem like “Daddy” or “Lady Lazarus”–I love those poems, but I love to introduce readers to less familiar aspects of her writing. I’ve always been especially drawn to Plath’s accounts of domestic interiors, to the clear, focused attention she brings to the details of home décor, children’s toys, clothes, accessories, stuff, and the processes of maintaining and preserving that stuff–painting, sewing, polishing, gardening. I think Plath uses this stuff to write about love–not necessarily as metaphors for love, although that’s probably true, too, but more as a way to enact or perform love within the poem and in the real world.

“Three Women”–particularly the section I’ve read–is really a goldmine for that stuff. The First Voice painting the nursery and the Second Voice sewing her material are both doing creative, domestic work that is also protective or reparative. There’s darkness there–traces or more than traces of acquisitiveness, selfishness, compulsion, codependence, delusion, denial, complacency–but there’s also so much tenderness, determination, courage, generosity, creativity, resourcefulness, patience, attention, labor, care. All those things are part of how I understand my own writing process, as well as my own relationship to the people I love, and the spaces and things I love, too. And I tend to express love, too, by making things and places and poems for people, and I think that’s one thing that draws me to good-student-Plath and happy-housewife-Plath, the Plath who a lot of people dismiss or deride.

Chris: What do you make of Plath’s juxtaposition of these three experiences? Why this sort of format as opposed to having three separate poems, or more than three voices?

Caolan: Well, we can read Three Women biographically, as describing Plath’s own experiences: she gave birth to both a son and a daughter, she had at least one miscarriage, she worried about unwanted pregnancies when she was a student at Cambridge. I hesitate to even say that, because readers’ fascination with Plath’s biography can get in the way of reading her actual poems. But in this case, I think biographical detail helps us understand that the poem is working both to represent a range of experiences with pregnancy and birth and to suggest how all of these experiences might be part of a single person’s life. There’s a productive tension in the poem between universality and particularlity, which is reinforced by the tension between the poem’s performance history as a radio play performed by three different actors and the experience you have reading the poem on the page, or listening to my recording here, where you realize Plath didn’t do much to differentiate the voices from one another in terms of diction or rhythm. One powerful effect of that tension is that it becomes almost impossible to make moral judgments about these women. For example, if these three voices actually belong to the same woman, we can’t think of the First Voice, who keeps her child, as a better person than the Third Voice, who doesn’t. Another effect is that the poem discourages us from psychologizing the woman or women as character(s), and instead focuses our attention on its concrete descriptions of what are often considered taboo bodily experiences. Earlier in the poem, describing her contractions, the First Voice says “I am used. I am drummed into use”–an incredibly evocative and brutal description of labor that I, personally, don’t think I fully understood before the birth of my daughter, but that probably helped shape my expectations for what childbirth might be like.

So we can think of the poem as describing three aspects of one intense, complicated experience–kind of like Robert Graves’s idea of the Triple Goddess, whose three aspects are the Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Plath was really into Graves, and really into three as a magic number, especially when you’re talking about groups of women: there are three Fates, three Graces. So that’s one reason there are three voices, not four or five or six.

Chris: You spoke earlier of how you enjoy introducing readers to the less familiar aspects of Plath’s writing. Is this poem one you came to know early in your reading of Plath? Also, what Plath poems in addition to “Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices” showcase the things you love about her poetry?

Caolan: I remember reading this poem in eighth grade, when I was reading almost anything by Plath that I could get my hands on. But before I opened my copy of Plath’s Collected Poems to make this recording, I’d forgotten what an involved history I had with “Three Women.” There are notes in the margins from papers I wrote when I was in college and grad school; there are also notes that suggest I must have performed some of the Second Voice’s sections as a monologue in my high-school drama class. And in college I took the title of my senior thesis, which was about Plath’s depiction of domestic space, from one of the First Voice’s lines: “I Have Painted Little Hearts on Everything.”

If you’re looking for it, you’ll actually find a lot of the things I love about “Three Women”–the attention to material domestic detail; the interconnectedness of creative work and love and protection; the TMI physicality–all over Plath’s writing, including her most famous poems, her prose writing, and her journals. But some great poems to revisit are “Letter in November,” “Last Words,” “Nick and the Candlestick,” “Morning Song,” “By Candlelight,” and “Kindness.”
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Caolan Madden holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins and is currently a PhD candidate in English literature at Rutgers. Recent poems have appeared in Bone Bouquet, Cartridge Lit, glitterMOB, Split Lip, and Black Warrior Review; some of her essays on literature and popular culture can be found online at weird-sister.com. Girl Talk Triptych, a collaborative chapbook she co-wrote with the feminist poetry collective (G)IRL, was published this spring by dancing girl press; her chapbook VAST NECROHOL is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Chris Petruccelli is snackin’ on some cornbread and debating what kind of gravy he should have for breakfast–sausage, or red eye? His poetry has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Cider Press Review, Nashville Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: the Journal, and elsewhere. Check out his chapbook Action at a Distance from Etchings Press. In his free time, Chris enjoys drinking whisky and smoking cigarettes with older women.

Lyric Essentials: Chen Chen reads “Lone Star Kundiman (For the Guy Who Seized My Arm After I Accidentally Cut the Line for the Toilet in Austin)” by Patrick Rosal.

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Chen Chen reads “Lone Star Kundiman (For the Guy Who Seized My Arm After I Accidentally Cut the Line for the Toilet in Austin)” by Patrick Rosal.

Hey Chen, before we get deep into this poem I’d like to start by saying that I’m a total sucker for long titles—I think it comes from my scientific background where for a while I’m pretty sure scientists were competing to give their articles the longest titles imaginable. This title takes the cake. So, first question, when it comes to a title are you a fan of the one worders—“Winter”—or obscenely long titles like the one you’ve read for us today?

Chen: Obscenely long. Yes. I mean, the title of my forthcoming book is When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. And recently I had a poem published called “I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule.” I love long titles. I love titles that are full, obnoxious sentences. But I also love the one worders. It’s so bold just to call a poem “Winter” or “Snafu” or “Poem.” Louise Glück has the plainest titles and she makes it kinda badass. So in my book I also have very short, humble titles. Titles all in lower case. Titles that require a magnifying glass. Molecular, nano titles. You know, for balance.

Chris: With the pop song references, the triumphant double slap redemption, and those final two lines I find myself terrified at what the narrator experiences, but also laughing and cheering on their vindication. Am I reading more humor into this piece than is actually present, or is that something you experience in this poem as well?

Chen: Definitely humor here. Which we can also think about in maybe a darker way—that the humor in the poem indicates or registers the (enormous) extent to which the speaker has experienced these racist microaggressions and so has come to see them as almost everyday. Well, because these incidents do happen all the time.

This discussion is making me think of a great moment from a great piece by Jacqui Germain: the phrase “c’est la vie” pops up in the middle of this piece, which is about being a black girl and hearing one’s white professor and white classmates casually throw around the n-word in the middle of a literature seminar. Because the texts feature that word. Because of whiteness. The phrase “c’est la vie” is so funny, the way it just shows up in the midst of all this awfulness. But the phrase is also completely serious. There’s a shrug the speaker of the piece seems to do, a shrug of “c’est la vie,” as in, “well this kind of thing happens and happens and here we are again here we go okay but not okay.”

As a queer Asian American, I do see and use humor as a coping mechanism, a survival tool, a form of awareness and knowledge that lets me be inventive in the face of a violation or erasure. Still, it’s not exactly healing, this kind of humor. It can be a band-aid on a gaping wound.

That’s what Rosal seems to be getting at: the fact that the speaker and the man he accidentally cuts in the line, both of them are dealing with a lack. The poem’s wrestling with these notions of strength versus power, compassion versus domination, healthy personhood/agency versus toxic masculinity. The speaker questions his own capacity for compassion. The man the speaker cuts clearly needs to question his lack of compassion, or patience, in that moment in the bathroom line. The speaker, as a Filipino American man, as one historically and presently oppressed, points out how exiting the bar in Austin doesn’t really solve anything. He still has to face a city, a state, a country that tends not to see people like him. The other guy, the white man, can go on to use the encounter as a chance to really learn something or to dismiss it as some random, irritating event. The other guy can literally go “c’est la vie” and be done with it. The last sentence of the poem, “No white boy left behind” is similarly complicated in its humor, I think.

Chris: It seems that Rosal’s use of humor is doing a lot of work in this poem as it raises the questions you’ve pointed out in regards to race, oppression, and the need to evaluate one’s compassion and empathy (or lack thereof). In addition to the humor, what is Rosal doing in this poem that you find to be essential to you as a writer?

Chen: I’m struck by his use of the pronoun “you,” which shifts from being the guy in the bathroom line (“how you eyed me to my place with your little smark”) to being, perhaps, the reader, or some generalized person (“In Texas, you can sit in a diner…”). But that second kind of “you” doesn’t seem generic to me, doesn’t seem to be a synonym for “one.” The “you” is at once another “I” and a kind of “you” that inhabits an othered, racialized body. I read the lines, “you practice what it’s like to be the last man on earth/or the first one to land in a city where no one sees you” as a particular experience, an experience of being an Asian American man. I’ve felt this kind of invisibility and erasure. I’m living in a Texas city myself at the moment. Few Asian Americans here, probably far fewer than there are in Austin, Rosal’s setting for this poem. I love Rosal’s use of the “you,” how the gaze of the poem shifts, how the poem asks a reader to inhabit an Asian American perspective as both “I” and “you,” how the poem asks the person who was “you” in the beginning to try seeing things as this “you,” this person who’s “in a city where no one sees you.” And when someone does see you, it’s to put you back in your (unthreatening, obedient, invisible) place. I think also of Claudia Rankine’s use of the “you” in her book, Citizen. The disorienting, destabilizing possibilities of the second person.

Chris: Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene in this poem that stands out above the others? Is there a piece of this poem that is most important to you, or does it change every time you read “Lone Star Kundiman”?

Chen: My favorite lines are: “Truth is, I couldn’t stop to consider how we both live/in a country mostly afraid of the difference between/strength and power.” I’ve been thinking and thinking about this difference, how these two words can mean radically different things. How power depends on hierarchies, binaries, absolutes, forms of domination. How strength is rooted in the difficult/lucky practice of love, community, open communication, vulnerability, an embrace of the unknown. Thinking this way is making me rethink a term like “empowerment.” Do we want to be powerful? Is power all about our own individual success? Does power always reproduce itself? Its assumptions and structures? Are we making real decisions or are we merely helping to perpetuate the world as we know it?
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Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and forthcoming spring 2017 from BOA Editions, Ltd. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in publications such as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Phantom, Drunken Boat, and Poem-a-Day. A Kundiman and Lambda Literary fellow, Chen is currently pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. For more, visit chenchenwrites.com.

Chris Petruccelli is the author of the chapbook Action at a Distance (Etchings Press). You can find his poetry in Appalachian Heritage, Nashville Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: the Journal, and elsewhere. Chris currently plays too much Civ V, nearly purchased the Sid Meier’s Civilization board game, and is searching couch cushions for enough change to buy a new desktop PC and a copy of Civilization VI.

Lyric Essentials: Nancy Reddy reads “Walmart Supercenter” by Erika Meitner

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Nancy Reddy reads “Walmart Supercenter” by Erika Meitner.

Nancy, there’s so much to love here. I myself love the moist dimes being traded for honey mustard because I’m all too familiar with pulling soggy dollar bills out of my pocket to pay for a coffee. Also, coming from the bible belt I really dig “God is merciful and gracious, but not just.” What are some of your favorite parts of this absolutely brutal and beautiful poem?

Nancy: I love the (for lack of a better word) thing-iness of the poem, the way it’s full of the stuff of ordinary life – the honey mustard and moist dimes you mention, the flip flops and lounge pants, the plastic shopping bags. This poem takes in the world, and not just the parts that are obviously beautiful or “poetic.” And it places that stuff alongside these really sharp, moving explorations of mercy, forgiveness, justice, as in the line that jumps from the seven abandoned kittens to the cashier speaking about small mercies. It’s rooted in incredibly close attention the material world, but it’s also capacious in its scope.

Chris: How about the qualities that make this poem essential? What are the elements that elevate this poem above others?

Nancy: I’m obsessed with how this poem moves. It starts in this utterly ordinary place – a trip to Walmart for juice, Pampers, tube socks, and it arcs up into a meditation on mercy and justice. It alternates between the speaker’s maneuvering of the shopping cart and a multitude or quirky and horrible things that have happened at Walmarts all around the country. These are the kind of stories that seem to just constantly arrive unbidden – every time I log in to Facebook or flip through the radio dial or catch the local news, there’s some fresh horror, usually something unimaginable that’s happened to a child. As a poet and as the mother of two young boys, I don’t know what to do with that. But this is a poem that doesn’t look away. It doesn’t try to impose any kind of neat moral, but it grapples, and it holds these really lovely, tender moments – a friendly old man on a scooter waving, the girl buying honey mustard sauce – against the other awful things. To me, this is a poem that demonstrates just how much poetry can hold. I think we need more of that.

Chris: Is that something you experiment with in your own poetry—testing how much a poem can hold?

Nancy: Absolutely. (I think our obsessions in reading often track really closely with our interests in writing, right?) So right now I’m working on a second collection of poems that’s about – in part – pregnancy and motherhood, and alongside those central themes, I’m also thinking about quantum physics and primates and evolution and human ancestors and theories of scientific mothering, among other things. Copia (the book this poem’s from) has been really essential as I write my way through connections and digressions and juxtapositions. Meitner’s work is just so capacious (to be a little punny), and it’s helped me to think about the poem in terms of capacity and breadth.

Chris: You discussed the movement earlier and it really is totally bonkers—it feels like a one player game of weird Walmart one-upmanship. In terms of the justice/mercy where do you think the narrator lands one the issue? Is Walmart and what it represents forever a place of struggle? Or, is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

Nancy: One of the things that I really like about this poem (and about the other poems in this book, which take place in convenience stores and rest stop bathrooms and Detroit) is that it doesn’t judge the place. It doesn’t have an ironic distance from Walmart – like, oh isn’t it hilarious that I’m here, buying my domestic goods? – and it also doesn’t look down on Walmart or its shoppers, which would have been really easy to do. For me, the role of Walmart in this poem is just that it’s actually such a central place for so much of America. Part of my family lives in a pretty rural part of central Pennsylvania, and for my stepsister, growing up, Walmart was just where you’d go with your friends to hang out. If you stayed there long enough, you’d see the whole town go by. And in this poem, the same thing’s true at a much bigger scale – if you scan the news for Walmart long enough, all the horrors in the world will happen there. But there’s also some beauty and some kindness, too.
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Nancy Reddy is the author of Double Jinx (Milkweed Editions, 2015), a 2014 winner of the National Poetry Series. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Horsethief, The Iowa Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. The recipient of a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, she teaches writing at Stockton University in southern New Jersey.

Chris Petruccelli is eating offal and drinking Tecate in Northeast Tennessee. He is the author of the chapbook Action at a Distance (Etchings Press) and his poetry appears or is forthcoming in journals such as Appalachian Heritage, Nashville Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: the Journal, and elsewhere.

Lyric Essentials: Hazem Fahmy reads “After the Cameras Leave, in Three Parts” by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib.

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Hazem Fahmy reads “After the Cameras Leave, in Three Parts” by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib.

Hazem, this is an incredibly poignant, powerful poem you’ve read for us today. What can you tell us about Abdurraqib’s poetry for those folks who might not be familiar with his work? Also, have you had a chance to read his new, debut book The Crown Aint Worth Much?

Hazem: Hanif’s work is so rich and captivating, I really don’t think there’s one way to exactly encapsulate its power. I’d say my favorite thing about it is his incredible weaving of pop culture and personal experience to create a mythos out of his native Columbus. I know of no other poet working today who has such an impeccable ability to immediately and thoroughly familiarize the reader with their hometown and, really, whole world.

I actually just recently ordered the book and it’s on its way now!

Chris: What are some of the elements that makes “After the Cameras Leave, in Three Parts” essential to you as a writer? Are there certain qualities in this poem that you try to emulate in your own work?

Hazem: This poem really highlights three things I am actively concerned with in virtually all of my work. It’s a powerhouse narrative that works with culture’s relationship to trauma and empowerment and brings the history alive through the voice of a city. As a Cairo native navigating American spaces that continually demonize and ostracize my culture and identity, I find immense power in this kind of emphasis on cultural history as a means of validating both the self and the identity to which the self belongs.

Chris: I’m curious about your take on the opening line of “After the Cameras Leave, in Three Parts” where the narrator says, “They listenin’ to the wrong music again, child.” What do you think the narrator is trying to communicate about the wrong music (“Mississippi Goddamn”) and right music (“Sinnerman”)?

Hazem: I am not very familiar with Simone’s work (let alone nearly as familiar as Hanif is), so I won’t attempt to analyze the dichotomy between the two songs too much. As I understand it, both songs are a response to extreme violence, but in slightly different ways. “Sinnerman” seems to be more concerned with sheer grief whereas “Mississippi Goddamn” focuses more on rage. This poem takes a long, hard look at the trauma and grief marginalized communities often can’t find the time for, often because the brutal marginalization is ongoing, and in that sense I see why Hanif would pay more attention to “Sinnerman”.

Chris: Cultural commentary, conceptions and receptions of the self, and “powerhouse narrative” as you put it seem especially important to poetry today which calls to mind a lot of incredible books—Marilyn Nelson’s My Seneca Village is one, Suck on the Marrow by Camille Dungy is another. Hanif tweeted the other week about his poem, “On the Filming of Black Death” being shared after the recent events in Tulsa and Charlotte (Hanif’s poem references a different, earlier shooting in Tulsa). Are there writers in addition to Abdurraqib that you feel people need to be reading right now?

Hazem: In general, people absolutely need to be reading more poets of marginalized identities, especially ones who’re actively attempting to craft new narratives out the of histories and cultures we’ve been born in. If I have to pick a few, I’d start with Safia Elhillo. Reading her work means being in a master class on how to see the world, in all its beauty and pain, through the smallest and most seemingly commonplace facets of our lives. Ocean Vuong has similarly changed the way I think of writing on the self, especially in the way he weaves his personal and family history with that of his country. I can also never recommend Danez Smith enough. I can’t think of any other writer who has such a thorough ability to wrestle with trauma and the horror of oppression while also creating space for hope and breathing.
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Hazem Fahmy is a poet and critic from Cairo. He is currently pursuing a degree in Humanities and Film Studies from Wesleyan University. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming in Mizna, COG and HEArt. In his spare time, he writes about the Middle East and tries to come up with creative ways to mock Classicism. He makes videos occasionally.

Chris Petruccelli is the author of the chapbook Action at a Distance (Etchings Press). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Nashville Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: the Journal, and elsewhere. Chris enjoys drinking whisky and smoking cigarettes with older women.

An Interview with Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

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Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the author of the forthcoming collection of poetry Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications, 2016). Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge is a feminist collection of poetry straddling borders, and arose when daughter of Mexican immigrants, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, traveled from Los Angeles to the Tucson-Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border in August 2011 to volunteer with the humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths. She hoped to gain a concrete understanding of the “wall,” and the result was a book illustrating a speaker driven to activism by a need to honor her family’s journey.

Bermejo spoke with our Editorial Intern, Kristin Figgins, about her influences, her family, the work that helped inspire the collection, and more.

Kristin Figgins: Cacti are present throughout Posada. What do you find so intriguing about the cactus as a plant or as a symbol?

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo: Before I went to the Tucson-sector of the border, I imagined it as a sandy, desolate plain vacant of any life. But when I got there, I found breathtaking peaks and canyons as well as all kinds of animals and vegetation. I think I was drawn to the cacti for their resilience in inhospitable terrain, and I found their blooms hopeful. They turned into a symbol for the people crossing in the area.

With the prickly pear cactus, the nopal, I feel a connection to my grandmother and my Mexican heritage when I see them. I like how they grow wild all throughout California, and how they can thrive with so little. They make me feel proud.

KF: Many of the poems in Posada are after other poets. Who are your biggest inspirations or influences as a writer, and why?

XJB: The biggest influence is Carolyn Forche’s The Country Between Us. She doesn’t have a poem in my book, but when I read her poetry in grad school, it was the first time I saw how my passion for activism and my poetry could marry. I don’t know that there would be a Posada without Forche. Another great influence was Michele Serros’ Chicana Falsa. I thank her in the acknowledgements because I read her book around my 3rd or 4th revision, and I fell in love with her voice and how unpretentious she is. After reading Chicana Falsa, I went back into my poems and tried to simplify–to look for those spots where I was trying too hard. I’ve always felt dumb, and had a fear of people discovering that, and because of that I sometimes overcompensate, so I was really thankful for the reminder.

KF: There are many beautiful relationships in Posada: mothers, daughters, aunts, and grandfathers. How much do you draw upon the real relationships in your life in your poetry?

XJB: This collection was written for my grandparents and my parents. I don’t know what will happen with future poems, but this one was all about them. From a young age, I knew my parents were immigrants, and I was interested in their stories and celebrating immigrant stories. I think I was always acutely aware of negative words, sentiments, and policies toward immigrants when I was a kid because that meant mom and dad. I wouldn’t have gone to the border if it weren’t for them. They are a huge part of my poet identity, and they are huge supporters of my work. In Sandra Cisneros’ new memoir, A House of My Own, she talks about how she had to move away from her family to be a writer. But for me, I couldn’t be a writer without my family.

KF: You write at the end of Posada that you were influenced by your work with the humanitarian organization No More Deaths, which polices the Mexico-U.S. border. How did that experience inspire or influence your writing?

XJB: I wouldn’t call it policing. They patrol migrant trails for support, medical care, and to be a witness to Border Patrol atrocities–but they aren’t policing anyone. They are fighting for accountability.

When I went to the border, I was two years out of an MFA program. I thought I was writing a book, but I didn’t really know what I was writing about. When I went and worked with No More Deaths, my book got its center, and I had something to put the other poems into context. I didn’t really have a book until I went, and though only half of the book is about the desert, it’s all in context with that journey, who the speaker is, and why she went.

KF: Posada is very interested in borders, not just in the sense of the Mexico-U.S. border, but also in the sense of pathways, being lost, and not quite fitting within the tidy borders of the world. Do you think poetry can help people feel like they have more structure, tidier borders as it were, or can help them feel found? Is this true for you?

XJB: Gregory Orr’s book, Poetry as Survival, talks about how writing a poem helps to bring order in chaos, and I definitely think that’s true. Through a poem, I think it is possible to create new structures, new understandings, and break out of old patterns. I think I wanted the poems about being lost or not fitting in to be a comfort.

KF: Throughout Posada, you play with language and what it means to be bilingual. One of my favorite poems is “to chew the empty spaces,” which omits articles and some prepositions, a common grammar “mistake” of bilingual individuals. How does being bilingual influence the way you think about language?

XJB: I wouldn’t call myself bilingual. I grew up in a Spanish speaking home, the youngest of four, and though my two oldest brothers are fluent, me and my other brother aren’t. I was spoken Spanish to my whole life. My grandparents only spoke Spanish, but with my parents, I always answered them in English. So I know Spanish, and when I speak it, it sounds pretty good, but I’m not fluent. I tried to show that with “Ode to Pan Dulce” with the way the Spanish weaves in and out. I feel like that’s how Spanish feels in my ear and on my tongue, it comes and goes without much thought. With the first half, I was trying to illustrate that sense, but with the second half, I wanted the Spanish to honor the language of the people I came into contact with as their first language.

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KF: “Meditation for Lost and Found” opens with a quote from Jorge Luis Borges and then follows a labyrinthine pattern. Other poems, like “Photograph of a Secret” seem to flirt with magic(al) realism. Do you ever find yourself inspired by Latin American authors like Borges, who use magic(al) realism as a way to portray the emotional reality of the daily lives of people living in countries that are dealing with economic and political upheaval?

XJB: Those two poems are heavily influenced by Borges and the possibilities held in a moment. I like to use magical realism to find possibilities when there don’t seem to be any, or to create some purpose, honor, or visibility when there isn’t any. “Meditation for the Lost and Found” is for the desaparecido, a word that has no direct translation in English, but means those who cease to be, disappear from the world without a trace, usually at the hands of a corrupt government. My hope with that poem is that by forcing the reader to focus on the words through its strange form, I am making a journey, a life visible again. I try to do something similar in “Our Lady of the Water Gallons.” The poem is intended to be the safe place because there are no safe places in the desert.

KF: What book is on your nightstand right now?

XJB: I just finished the YA novel, Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan. It’s about a 13 year-old girl who immigrates to the US from Aguascalientes, Mexico when her family experiences a tragic change of fortune. It’s a Depression era book, and I’m reading it for inspiration for my current project, which is a novel set in 1930s California.

KF: What piece of advice have you been given that was instrumental to your development as a writer?

XJB: Eloise Klein Healy told me to push myself to be personal and to do the work. It was her advice that encouraged me to volunteer with No More Deaths, so it was pretty instrumental in the development of this book. Before that, I was doing a lot of persona poems on immigrant stories I found in history books, mostly from the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese Internment. Her advice made me realize why I cared so much about immigration rights and reform, and it all stemmed from my own parents.

Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge is now available for pre-order with free shipping from Sundress Publications!

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a first generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, California, who fondly remembers weekends spent haciendo traviesos with her cousins around her grandparents’ Boyle Heights home. She wrote this collection while living in a house in the shadows of Dodger Stadium in historic Solano Canyon. Bermejo is a 2016-2017 Steinbeck fellow and was previously honored as a Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women grantee, and Los Angeles Central Library ALOUD newer poet. Her poetry received 3^rd place in the 2015 Tucson Festival of Books literary awards and has been published with The American Poetry Review, The Acentos Review, CALYX, Crazyhorse, and Tahoma Literary Review among others. She has received residencies with Hedgebrook, the Ragdale Foundation, and is a proud member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop. In Los Angeles, she is a cofounder of Women Who Submit, a literary organization using social media and community events to empower women authors to submit work for publication, and curates the quarterly reading series HITCHED. She received a BA in Theatre Arts from California State University of Long Beach and an MFA in Creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles where she is currently a book coach and workshop instructor with the inspiration2publication program.
Kristen Figgins is a writer of fabulism, whose work has appeared in such places as The Gateway Review, Sleet Magazine, Hermeneutic Chaos, Sakura Review, Menacing Hedge, and more. Her story “Track Me With Your Words, Speak Me With Your Feet” was winner of the 2015 Fiction Award from Puerto del Sol, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Micro Award, and Write Well Award. Her first chapbook, A Narrow Line of Light, is available for purchase from Boneset Books and her novella, Nesting, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications in the Summer of 2017.

Lyric Essentials: Emilia Phillips reads “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly.

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Emilia Phillips reads “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly.

Emilia, what a haunting read! A few months ago Kori Hensell read Dickey’s “The Sheep Child” which “Song” reminds me of with its strange, surrealist qualities. What makes “Song” essential to you as a writer?

Emilia: “Song” embodies the essential strangeness and loneliness that I most admire in poetry. It’s not just about grief or violence or loss, or reconciling those things together, but the feeling that the poem in some way moves into that space freed up by something left behind or taken away, and it can never quite fill up that space. I often find that I’m most interested, invested, and devastated by poems that do that very thing.

Chris: I love the exchange between the beginning and ending of this poem where the goat’s song at the start appears to become the song of the boys who did the killing at the end. What do you make of this kind of reciprocity that bookends the poem?

Emilia: That ending seems to be more about the poem’s songiness more than the voices of the goat or the boys. In some ways, the song is the poem, and so the poem describes its own creation by its description of the song at the end. This feels especially true to me because of the poem’s title—“Song.” The poem is the song that is sung within the poem. It’s like looking into a mirror that’s facing a mirror here, and because of that, rather than crowding out the reader, it opens up space, to create more loneliness. I can’t help but think of a line in an Elvis Perkins song here: “Your vampire mirrors, face to face, / they saw forever out into space.” The poem that is the song that is the song mentioned in the poem seems to leave a gap, a loop that can never close. In that way, the poem sends us spinning back to its beginning: “Listen,” it says forever.

Chris: “Song” then epitomizes the type of poem you’re most interested and invested in by promising an eternal redundancy of almost fulfilling a void via the loop it creates? That is absolutely brutal! Also an incredible, and beautiful concept. How else does Kelly appeal to your interests of loneliness and strangeness in this poem? Is there any particular part of the poem that catches you every time you read it?

Emilia: Well, I don’t think I could answer this question without mentioning that singing goat’s head! But, in some ways, that’s the most obvious strangeness of the poem, right? I mean, what really gets to me is the way in which the girl interacts with the goat. There’s loneliness there, but I don’t see it as a bad loneliness. Isn’t the girl with the goat not in a contented loneliness? Is not each lonely unto its own species, not to mention its own self?

Chris: Is the “essential strangeness and loneliness” you mentioned admiring characteristic of Kelly’s work? What other poems or books do you enjoy that attempt to fill a void, but come up just short?

Emilia: If I had to create a synesthetic analogy for Kelly’s work, at least those poems in the book from which “Song” appears, I’d have to say that she reminds me of standing on a windy hill, where the wind fills one’s ears and seems to carry snatches of meaning, but they dissolve quite quickly. That’s not a complaint. For me, Kelly is a master at mystery, of not over-determining a poem. That’s what I most admire. Levis does this, and so does Alice Oswald. I also feel it intensely in the works of Lo Kwa Mei-en, Paisley Rekdal, Diane Seuss, and Dana Levin—but all in different ways! For me, the work that really devastates is that which buckets out a lot of water in an idea but spills some in the process and can’t fill that space back up.
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Emilia Phillips is the author of two poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, Groundspeed (2016) and Signaletics (2013). Her poetry appears in Boston Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2015 Nonfiction Prize from StoryQuarterly, the 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, among other places. She’s the Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Centenary University.

Chris Petruccelli is still doing his thing in East Tennessee. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Cider Press Review, Connotation Press, Nashville Review, Still: The Journal, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. Chris continues to drink whisky and smoke cigarettes with older women. Check out his chapbook Action at a Distance from Etchings Press.

Lyric Essentials: Emily Corwin reads “Damsel, Stage Directions” by Stacy Gnall

Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Emily Corwin reads “Damsel, Stage Directions” by Stacy Gnall.

Emily, a fantastic poem you’ve read for us today. What can you tell us about Gnall and her work?

Emily: Gnall’s book, Heart First into the Forest was recommended to me by a friend who had read her work and immediately thought of me. In poems, I am always interested in female bodies, fairy tales, girlhood, woods, Midwestern landscape—all of which Gnall is investigating, so the book was really inspiring for me. She is from Ohio, which was another connection, since I spent my years in undergrad and grad school there, and she completed her MFA at Alabama. I believe her first book draws heavily from her MFA thesis collection. It is really a magical set of poems. I also discovered, recently entering the role of Poetry Editor at the Indiana Review, that we had published some of the poems in that collection back in 2009. It was so exciting to see the poems in a different context, to see them before they became part of the book.

Chris: I find the “stage directions” portion of the title intriguing. There is the implication that this is an act, but throughout the poem it seems the escape we are witnessing is real. What do you make of the title and how it influences the poem?

Emily: I would say, the poem is playing with the idea of a damsel in distress as a role to be played, but interestingly, a role that follows certain directions. She must wake in a place she doesn’t recognize, she must fall just once in the chase. Gnall is playing with a familiar narrative, that of the girl alone in the forest, the girl running from a mysterious, implicitly male threat. There are expectations for what that looks like—we know with this scene of the chase, we have seen it before. But we don’t know, in this poem, how it will end, and that creates tension, an investment on our part. Notice how, by the end, the repetition of “must” has fallen away. The girl manages to escape the threat as well as the expectations embedded in her narrative.

You’re right to say it feels less like an act and more real. I would read the “stage” here as being less of a theater stage and more cinematic. The poem has an immediacy and a motion to it, like a film sequence, the camera tracking our heroine through the woods and out into the road. The stakes are so high—we want her to survive, and we are given access to every moment of the chase. So that, by the end of the poem, when there is the implication of a happy ending, that she made it—this is very satisfying. Though we do not know with certainty if the threat is still behind her, there is still a sense of relief and triumph—that at least, she has made it out the woods. This poem stays with me—I return to it again and again, and each time, I still get caught up in the suspense. What happened to her before the poem began? Who is the “him” and how far behind is he? Will she make it out this time? It really is like watching a favorite scary movie.

Chris: I love the open endedness of this poem that you mention. It gives the poem this sandbox feel—allowing the reader to change the story every time the poem is read. Are uncertain endings something you use or experiment with in your own poetry? Or are you more of a definitive ending type of person?

Emily: I like uncertain endings for sure—my writing tends be extremely lyrical, ambiguous, suspending the reader in emotion. The poems I like reading too tend to end in an undefined space. I think that’s what makes a poem beautiful—its mystery, its multiplicities, the poem as a site for many readings. I don’t want to know everything about it all at once, I want there to be something open and indefinite, a thing I can return to over my lifetime and understand it differently each time. That kind of poem has longevity and power for me.

Chris: In addition to the suspense and urgency in this poem, what other features of “Damsel, Stage Directions” make this poem essential to you as a writer? Are there other poems by Gnall that you would recommend to us?

Emily: What makes this poem essential for me is its attention to pacing, its whimsy and magic, its lush imagery that opens up into larger themes of gender, myth, and story-telling. I love all of Gnall’s work, but especially, “Bella in the Wych Elm,” “Trespass,” and “What the Child Was Given Next”—all of which are in Heart First into the Forest. I cannot wait to see what she does next.
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Emily Corwin is an MFA candidate in poetry at Indiana University-Bloomington and the Poetry Editor for Indiana Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Winter Tangerine, Hobart, smoking glue gun, and Word Riot. Her chapbook, My Tall Handsome was recently published through Brain Mill Press. You can follow her at @exitlessblue.

Chris Petruccelli recently spilled boiling hot mashed potatoes on his foot. Yikes. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Cider Press Review, Nashville Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and Still: The Journal. Check out his chapbook Action at a Distance from Etchings Press. In his free time, Chris continues to drink whisky with older women.

Lyric Essentials: Pauletta Hansel reads “The Hug” by Tess Gallagher.

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Pauletta Hansel reads “The Hug” by Tess Gallagher.

Pauletta, this is a wonderful poem you’ve read for us today. I’m not sure if Gallagher or her work need an introduction, but do you remember your first experience with her poetry? What do enjoy most about Gallagher’s work?

Pauletta: Chris, I think the first poem of Tess Gallagher’s I read was “I Stop Writing the Poem” “about” (ostensibly) interrupting writing to take care of the laundry, which always gives me an immediate ping of recognition—the tangle of art and life and memory. I am drawn to narrative poems, both in reading and writing. To poems where the story itself is the metaphor for some larger story. Gallagher does this especially well. The intimacy of the details within her poems gives me a sense of not just clearly viewing the scene, but embodying it.

Chris: What about this particular poem, “The Hug”? What are some specific elements that make this poem stand out to you as an essential piece of writing?

Pauletta: I chose “The Hug” as a poem to learn by heart when I used some of the practices in Kim Rosen’s powerful book Saved by a Poem in one of the poetry classes I teach. The poem was given to me by a potter friend who is also a great reader at a time when I was helping to care for a dear friend with brain cancer. Caring for him meant also caring for his complicated and somewhat ornery family. Pam said, “You have to read this poem!” And so I did, and not just read it but lived with it, took it into my breath, chanted it (“How big a hug is this supposed to be?) and through this process, came to a deeper sense of what it means to be connected and responsible to and for, not just those we choose, but those whom our lives choose for us.

What I never managed to do is to learn the whole poem by heart—it’s a long one!—but there are still bits and pieces of it embedded and available to me when I need them, as I often do, caring now for my mother who has dementia, and doing this within her current living situation in a memory care unit of a nursing home, so that hardly a day goes by that I don’t “lean my blood and my wishes” into a stranger for whom I feel such tenderness or into my mother who, while never a stranger, is often so very different from the mother I knew.

So, how do you (do I, do we) come back from those experiences? We don’t, in a sense, because they remain within us, “the imprint of/a planet in my cheek/ when I walk away. When I try to find some place/ to go back to.”

Gallagher’s poem is so much about a particular hug—hers, not mine—that I can smell the man’s overcoat, hear the voice of the street poet recede as the coat and the man envelop me. And “the houses—/what about them?— the houses.” (Ah! That line gets me every time!)

But the poem is also Joe, and my mom and the guy, Bill who paces the dementia unit and says, “Hi, Babe” every time he sees me. We writers all know that the universal is only visible within the particular. Gallagher does such particularities brilliantly, I think, and then startles us into the universal as the image of a button imprinting a planet on the speaker’s cheek, becomes one world flowing into another. For me, this poem (like the hug it describes) is truly “a masterpiece of connection.”

Chris: Do you find it difficult to read and write narrative poems given the level of intimacy and transportive power that exists in them? I imagine that it takes an emotional toll to “go there” while writing, reading, and creating such emotive conditions in a piece of writing.

Pauletta: The short answer is no. When I write I usually go to an interior place that I identify as being “down below” emotion. I feel a sort of clarity, an intense desire to “get it right,” to write my way through a remembered experience to a place of truth—albeit a subjective truth. Mostly I feel a sort of relief that I am naming the experience as fully and well as I can. I don’t write for catharsis. I write for understanding, and hopefully to create something beautiful and whole out of my life, even the broken parts. Especially the broken parts (that’s where, as Leonard Cohen says, the light gets in.)

Right now, much of my writing is about my mother’s experience with dementia, and my experience with her. I find myself living, and writing, very much in the present. The past feels less available to me and happy memories make me sad! I am sure there is a perversity about that statement which says as much about my personality as it does about my current situation! But the losing of self for my mother, and the losing of mother for me is constant—not static—a verb, not a noun, and this is very much affecting the poems I write. The remembered experience may be from this morning or last week, rather than decades past, which gives it a sort of immediacy on the page. So the challenge becomes how to contain this in a poem in such a way that it is not overwhelming to the reader. To write poems that are intimate but still communal. I find myself turning to form, which is new for me. The sonnet has been particularly useful to me. It helps me lean toward craft in my poems even as I am writing them, which, for me anyway, provides a counterweight to the intimacy of the poem’s present tense. So, the short answer was no, but the long answer is…complicated. (Tangled, again.)

Chris: One last question, Pauletta. What other poems by Gallagher would you recommend to us? And—I lied—one other question: are there other poets you enjoy reading who tangle together all the threads of our tumultuous, beautiful human lives?

Pauletta: Gallagher is one of the poets that I have encountered mostly in anthologies, rather than in her collections, and I see I need to change this. In addition to the poems mentioned above, I love “Black Silk” (and recommend, too, the essay where I first encountered it, in Jane Hirshfield’s Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry). Also the poems, “Choices” and “Red Poppy.” And here, Chris, is the great gift of this interview to me: I did not know that Gallagher wrote about her mother’s journey with dementia. My research to answer this question sent me to a book on my shelf I have not yet read, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease, with a foreword and several poems by Tess Gallagher.

Other narrative poets I love? So numerous! Allison Luterman, Dorianne Laux, Larry Levis, George Ella Lyon, Ada Limon, Cathy Smith Bowers (proving I read poets whose names don’t begin with “L!”), Sharon Olds, Nick Flynn, Maurice Manning, Linda Parsons, Frank X Walker, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Lisel Mueller …I’ll stop here, as there is no way to name them all! But you might note that a fair number of those have southern and Appalachian roots. Appalachian literature is as diverse as the region itself, but still, there is something about a good story that is a connecting force.
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Pauletta Hansel was recently named Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate. Her poems and prose have been featured in journals including Atlanta Review, Talisman, Kudzu, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage and Still: The Journal, Stirring and on The Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. She is author of five poetry collections, most recently Tangle (Dos Madres Press, 2015), What I Did There (Dos Madres Press, 2011) and The Lives We Live in Houses (Wind Publications, 2011). Pauletta is managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Pauletta leads writing workshops and retreats in the Greater Cincinnati area and beyond.

Chris Petruccelli is the author of the chapbook Action at a Distance (Etchings Press). His poetry can be found in Appalachian Heritage, Cider Press Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. Chris himself can be found somewhere in northeast Tennessee drinking whisky and smoking cigarettes with older women.

Lyric Essentials: Kirun Kapur reads “Meditation at Lagunitas” by Robert Hass.

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Chris: Welcome to Lyric Essentials, where writers and poets share with us a passage or poem which is “essential” to their bookshelf and who they are as a writer. Today Kirun Kapur reads “Meditation at Lagunitas” by Robert Hass.

Kirun, I remember first being introduced to Robert Hass through his book Field Guide and getting absolutely floored. Sun Under Wood was really spectacular as well. I could read Hass all day. Do you remember your first run in with his work and what that was like? What makes Hass’ poetry so essential?

Kirun: My first encounter with Hass took place in the stacks of the University of Hawaii library. I was still in high school, but, occasionally, I could get permission to visit the University library for “research purposes.” I pulled Field Guide off the shelf at random, never having heard of the book or of Hass. I didn’t read him all day, but possibly all afternoon. The UH library was difficult to like. It was dark and cavernous and the lights in the poetry section never worked properly, blinking and buzzing. The only thing it had in common with the sunny, tropical exterior was that it was always humid. I read Field Guide, damply, sitting on the floor at the end of an aisle, angling the book to catch some light from the windows.

What’s essential about Hass has changed for me over the years, but what I remember from that first encounter is simply the way the opening poem captured me. The first line is “I won’t say much for the sea.” For someone living on an island (an island sentimentalized and exalted precisely because of the beauty of the sea) this was an extraordinary thing to say. I loved, immediately, his tone—seemingly frank, unsentimental, occasionally edging toward raw, even rude. “Here filthy life begins.”—another line I remember so clearly. I loved the way the delicacy and power of the ocean scene is entirely preserved, even heightened, by Hass’s bald tone. That tone allowed him to say anything and everything—from minute observations (“fins of duck’s-web thickness) to grand truths (But it’s strange to kill/ for the sudden feel of life. The danger is/ to moralize/ that strangeness”). I read the poem over and over, first marveling, then trying to understand the trick of it.

Chris: My favorite thing about “Meditation at Lagunitas” is how simple and universal it is. I have to admit I almost cry whenever I look at a photo of Robert Hass—he’s just so damn perfect. And his work is the same—so smooth, approachable, and calm. I always get choked up and swoony at “a word is elegy to what it signifies.” What lines or images do you most enjoy in this poem?

Kirun: Oh, there are many. The line “to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,” is such a pleasure to say, making a bramble of my mouth. The lines “After a while I understood that,/ talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,/ pine, hair, woman, you and I” are favorites, too, capturing so much of what I love about this poem—its scope, meaning, its perfect balance of intimate and abstract. Really, the whole second half of this poem kills me.

Chris: I love the quiet tension that Hass creates. “Meditation at Lagunitas” always seems so multifaceted and clever—part elegy, part ars poetica, a celebration of diversity and our inability to wrangle our minds and language around everything we experience. I’m fanboying. What are the elements in this poem that are most important to you as a writer?

Kirun: It’s hard to pick just one or two important elements, but recently, I’ve been interested in how far a poem can travel, how much space it can create in that journey. Meditation at Lagunitas travels such an incredible distance, moving from the abstraction of the beginning (“each particular erases/the luminous clarity of a general idea”) to the concrete nouns of the end (“shoulders,” “pumpkinseed,” “bread,” “blackberry”). It moves by turning inward—from the world of big ideas toward the most intimate world of private speech and feeling: first a personal talk with a friend, then the memory of an intimate love affair, and, finally, the self talking to the self in private revelations that send us back out into the world (“it hardly had to do with her.” “I must have been the same to her.”). When I read the poem, I feel that movement as a lowering of the voice, both the sense and the volume of my voice falling through the registers of sound and speech. You can’t possibly say the first line, “All the new poems are about loss,” in the same manner as you say the last: “blackberry, blackberry, blackberry. The word “blackberry” has been transformed by the movement of the poem—by the end it is a platonic ideal, an intimate sensual object, a numinous religious relic; it is a word, a thing, an elegy and an immediate feeling, all at once.

Chris: One last question in regards to “pumpkinseed” as a name for the flitting orange fish, are there any names of things that you particularly love? Or do you have a name for something that you, a friend, or family member has created that you enjoy?

Kirun: I grew up in Hawaii, where the English is sometimes heavily inflected with a creole called Pidgin. Pidgin incorporates words from a great variety of languages—Hawaiian, Samoan, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese—reflecting all the cultures that have come to the islands. I love so many Pidgin words and phrases. “Hemajang,” for instance. It means completely messed up. As in, Kirun’s answers to your questions are all “hemajang.”
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Kirun Kapur is the winner of the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize in Poetry and the Antivenom Poetry Award for her first book, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist (Elixir Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in AGNI, Poetry International, FIELD, Prairie Schooner, The Christian Science Monitor and many other journals. She has taught creative writing at Boston University and at Brandeis University. She will be a visiting writer at Amherst College in the fall. Kapur has been awarded fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Vermont Studio Center and MacDowell Colony. She is the director of the New England arts program, The Tannery Series, and serves as Poetry Editor at The Drum Literary Magazine. She was recently named an “Asian-American poet to watch” by NBC news. Kapur grew up in Honolulu and now lives north of Boston.

Chris Petruccelli’s latest poetry can be found in Appalachian Heritage. New poems are forthcoming in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel volume 19: Appalachia Under Thirty. His work can also be found in Cider Press Review, Connotation Press, Nashville Review, Still: The Journal, and elsewhere. Chris currently works, runs, and drinks whisky in east Tennessee.

So You Want to Start a Press? : A Publishing Roundtable

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So maybe you’ve started a literary journal or a podcast? Maybe you’ve been rejected by presses and feel that it’s time to start a place that reflects your thoughts on contemporary publishing? Maybe you’re working in an English Department that’s looking to expand their scope? There are lots of reasons for starting a press, but before you do, check out Sundress Publications’ roundtable discussion with independent press editors about the highs and low of indie publishing.

Why did you found your press?

Carly Miller: I think one of the main reasons was to figure out a way to be a literary citizen outside of being writers and past literary magazine editors. When my cofounders and I started the press, we were five MFA graduate students sitting in a deli asking ourselves what books we love and why we love them. We found ourselves discussing literary theory in conjunction with how our favorite books “work” in their engagement with the reader, how we wanted to engage in this idea of “the creative act as critical act.” Poetry engages with so many different tensions, from subject matter to craft, and we wanted to create texts that could allow the conversation to become wider through the poet’s own voices and how they engage with various tensions. So, we founded a press to engage in these moments of tension, a.k.a. contemporary poetics alongside contemporary criticism, with hopes to contribute to this larger conversation.

Margaret Bashaar: Masochism? I mean, I have always found a deep sense of emotional fulfillment in promoting the art of others. There hasn’t been a time since I was 14 that I wasn’t editing some kind of literary publication. Little in life genuinely makes me happier than finding poetry that I feel merits an audience and working to connect that poetry with an audience. So masochism, definitely. And I like making things with my hands, and books of poetry seemed like as good a thing as any to make with my hands.

M. Mack: The phrase we use is that we wanted to fill a gap in the publishing landscape. At the time, in 2012, there was a real shortage of markets that both called themselves feminist and welcomed work from folks who did not identify as women. So we created Gazing Grain Press as a place for feminists of all genders. The landscape has changed a lot since then, which is really exciting, and we now have a number of contemporaries.

Juliet Cook: I started my Blood Pudding Press close to ten years ago now, so it’s hard for me to remember the exact details of how I felt at that time, but I know it involved a strong and genuine passion for poetry and a realization that it was mostly poets who published other poets. I had been a big fan of ‘zines in my late teens through mid twenties, then indie literary magazines in my twenties all the way until now. When I was in my early thirties, I became a big fan of frequent blogging for several years. My blog site was Xanga and my blogger name was candydishdoom. I met a few creative writers there (some of whom I’ve remained connected with ever since), right around the time when they were initially starting their own online literary magazines and/or small presses. For example, Rachel Kendall, who started Sein und Werden not long after we met and has kept it going for years now and Kristy Bowen, who started Dancing Girl Press around that time. I loved how small indie poetry presses seemed like unique artsy poetic variations of ‘zines and I loved the individualism of our Xanga blog style communication and I loved poetry and poetry chapbooks.

I think I’d had a little back burner of an inkling to start my own itty bitty press for a year or two before I actually did it, but I felt overly nervous that I’d somehow screw it up. But in late 2006, I had this sudden spurt of finishing a small series of Twin Peaks inspired poems that had been sitting unfinished in the back of a folder for about 10 years, and I felt really strongly about the poems, and thought they worked best together instead of individually, and so I decided that would be a great time to start my own small press and publish my own chapbook first, because if I had trouble with formatting, design, or anything else, I wouldn’t be affecting another poet with my fledgling difficulties. Kristy Bowen gladly shared information with me about how she formatted her Dancing Girl Press chapbooks, I followed her formatting tips, I designed my own cover art, and I took it from there. After I got more comfortable with formatting and design, I shifted away from publishing myself with my own press and started publishing multiwriter collections and individual chapbooks by others.

For years, I felt so passionately excited about choosing chapbooks, designing chapbooks, and uniquely hand-crafting chapbooks. I loved being a part of the poetry community who was not only focused on herself, but also helped support others too.

What were some of the early pitfalls you found?

Carly Miller: We’re only two years old, so we may still be in the early pitfalls stage. One of them is definitely funding—we started the press as grad students, who don’t make a lot of money in the first place, and we’re all trying to find jobs and stability in the real world. But we rallied, and we’re working on ways to figure out funding (a.k.a. we’re finalizing our Indiegogo campaign to run sometime during the summer).

Margaret Bashaar: Time. In the past I have over-committed myself, time-wise, and it’s been a huge problem. Essentially, Hyacinth Girl Press is two people—Sarah Reck (who is our prose editor and does all our layout and design work and runs our website) and myself. It was a struggle for us to find a balance with the number of projects we could realistically take on without overwhelming ourselves, and the chapbooks we put out suffering as a result.

Juliet Cook: I honestly don’t remember many EARLY pitfalls, aside from my initial nervousness. I remember feeling extremely drawn to, excited, and passionate about what I was doing for quite a few years.

Reading the responses above mine, about money and time, I agree, BUT I don’t remember those being major concerns of mine when I first started my press. As far as funding, I don’t expect nor do I want anyone else to help fund my press (other than buying the created chapbooks). I am an ANTI-fan of how much crowdfunding has grown in recent years. As far as time, that can certainly be a challenge, but I’ve tried my best not to take on more than I can reasonably handle.

For me personally, the pitfalls came later, when I started to feel as if my press was inundating so much of my time and creative energy, that I didn’t have enough time to read things not related to the press, to write and revise my own poetry, to submit my own poetry, and so forth. I think I have a high drive but a moderate to slow process of accomplishing certain kinds of things. I’m not a good multitasker; I’m a one focus at a time sort of person; and for various reasons, it seemed to be getting harder for me to split my focus in all the directions I wanted to and it got to the point where I sometimes started to feel bothered by my own brain’s slow pace. Over the years, I’ve heard quite a few small press editors/writers express that their press started to take precedence over their own writing—and that’s fine, if you WANT that to happen—but ultimately, I DIDN’T want anything to take precedence over my own writing, at least not on a long term, ongoing basis.

Some other pitfalls that came later for me were partly generated by social media and/or my own brain’s interpretation of certain aspects of social media. Social media, especially facebook, is so up-to-the-minute that it can rather easily cause you to feel like if you’re offline for a few days, then you’re not going to stay up to date and you’re not going to stay on top of things that are going on in poetry land. Plus sometimes on social media, certain poets or presses suddenly seem to get lambasted by a whole group of others and if you were offline for a few days, you don’t even know what generated the lambasting when you get back online, and even if some of the lambasting was deserved, it seems to quickly reach the point of fast-paced attack mode, like people are flinging an arsenal of pies at other people’s faces and the pies have weapons loaded inside and people seem to launch too quickly into taking the side of this weapon-loaded pie or that weapon-loaded piece.

Another social media related pitfall for me is that I feel like I see other small presses talking about their big influxes of chapbook sales and then I start wondering why is my press barely selling enough chapbooks to break even when other small presses sound like they’re selling more than double the amount I’m selling and so what am I doing wrong, etc. . . .

When I started to question my own way of doing things, that’s when I also started to reconsider my press—because I don’t want poetry to feel like some sort of competitive popularity contest, yet part of my mind felt as if it was starting to warp itself into that way of thinking.

Like one part of my mind couldn’t care less how I compare to others; but the other part of my mind was some mutant cheerleader doing little splits and wondering why this press’s splits and this press’s splits appeared to be spreading much further than mine, even though I didn’t necessarily want mine to spread that much further.

M. Mack: One of our favorite early pitfalls happened when we took on Meg Day’s chapbook We Can’t Read This in 2013. We had to (quickly) get permissions to print ASL sign images in the chapbook and then redesign the book with the images we got permission to use. We wrote many carefully worded queries to publishers of ASL dictionaries and spent many hours scanning and erasing backgrounds in Photoshop. We got outstanding images to use from the University of Alberta Press, for free, and that worked out great. The thing about running a press is that you never really know what is going to happen. Things happen, and you figure out how to respond. Often, you figure out that the response involves a carefully worded query.

This isn’t exactly a pitfall, but it’s important to remember that everyone involved with your press is volunteering their time and attention and energy because they believe in the work. One thing that often surprises people I talk to is that expanding a staff takes time. Expansion isn’t as simple as bringing more people on to handle a growing workload. We expanded our staff from two to ten in 2014, following six months of preparation, trying to make our processes as transparent as possible and making all of our policies and procedures as open to revision as possible, and preparing ourselves to let go of some control of our precious literary baby. Even with six months of preparing for expansion, it was a healthy learning curve for all of us. We operate as a feminist press, and it is difficult sometimes. It is important to be open about how much work is required to run a press.

How much marketing is a new indie press expected to do for its authors?

Carly Miller: I think we’re expected to do just as much as older presses! I mean, we definitely have to hit the ground running with promoting our books to the best of our ability, and finding ways to get the book in other people’s hands.

Because we’ve mostly created anthologies, we’ve taken advantage of Twitter by tweeting lines from the anthology. We’re always keeping an eye on our contributors, too, helping to promote a new poem or a new book of theirs. We also connected with a few reviewers and teachers who reviewed or taught our books in their classrooms. We’re also wanting to host more readings, whether they’re in San Diego (our hometown/location) or not. These examples lead me to say that we’re so lucky that our contributors want to help us in terms of marketing efforts—Angela Veronica Wong set up a Spotlight feature on Coldfront (here’s the link: http://coldfrontmag.com/spotlight-locked-horn-press-part-1of-8/) and Krystal Languell hosted a joint reading for us in New York when our first books came out.

Basically, I think authors are expecting marketing efforts, but are also willing to help with marketing because that is the landscape of indie press publishing today. We have our own set of people we contact to help us get a review or something, but we’ve also seen the power of what happens when contributors promote their own work—literally, one contributor shared our newest collection on their social feed, and one of their friends immediately bought the book. We hope our contributors want to share the book with their friends, but we’re focused more on our efforts to get the books where they need to go.

Margaret Bashaar: I think a tiny indie press is expected to do as much promotion and marketing as that press promises to do. I know some presses don’t send out review copies, some don’t bother to try to get their books in bookstores, some don’t maintain their websites with a page for each chapbook, some don’t do promos for their chapbooks, some don’t do pre-sales, some never attend AWP, some only attend AWP and eschew all other fairs and conferences, and some do all of the above and more. I think it’s a case by case basis, and I feel that as long as you are upfront with what you as an editor are capable of and willing to do, then you’re doing great. Be honest. Do what you can.

Juliet Cook: I think this is variable and largely depends on the press. The size of the press, the money of the press, the number of editors of the press, the time constraints of the press, the location of the press, the brainwaves of the press and what those waves are aiming to do.

My press doesn’t do a great deal of in-person promoting, overall. I’ve been to AWP a few times, but certainly can’t afford that conference regularly. I’ve been to smaller, more local conferences and events in my general area. But I’m limited because of location, my brain flukes, and other reasons.

I do promote new chapbooks quite a bit online (via facebook, twitter, my personal blog, my Blood Pudding Press blog, and my website), I do have an online shop offering my Blood Pudding Press chapbooks (https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress), and I do send out quite a few review copies of each chapbook. I appreciate it when the authors help to market and promote their work too.

One positive thing about social media for presses is that it’s a widely available promotional tool.

One not so positive thing is it can shift your attention all over the place, looking at a little bit of this and a little bit of that and wondering how in the world you’re going to find time to focus on everything that interests you.

With everything that’s going on in social media, all at the same time, even though posts can direct attention towards your press, they don’t necessarily increase the sales of your press. Just because people like a bunch of things on social media doesn’t mean they’re going to buy all those things they like.

Margaret Bashaar: I completely agree with what Juliet says about social media—popularity on social media does not necessarily translate to chapbook sales. My top five selling chapbooks I could never have predicted. There doesn’t seem to be a very set formula for “this is what will make a chapbook sell,” and I do my best to not worry about that. I hope that if I feel passionately about a book that will translate to others and they will want to read the book.

Sometimes something totally unexpected and ridiculous happens that you could never in any way control—a chapbook that I published in 2013 was featured on Jen Campbell’s book vlog as her favorite book she read in 2015, and sales of that chapbook skyrocketed as a result. There was no way for me to control this, for me to make this happen, other than to publish a bunch of chapbooks and for them to somehow make their way to her and for that particular chapbook to speak to her.

I think it’s easier to say what will make a chapbook NOT sell. If the poet is non-present on social media, if you release the chapbook on a holiday, if the poet or editor is non-present in promoting the book. Things like that.

M. Mack: All of the marketing. (I’m kidding, kind of.) If you want to publish a book, you have to market the book. That said, you’re probably volunteering your time to publish books. Marketing is a very important collaboration between the editor and the author. Make the workload more reasonable by being smart about where you send materials. Ask your authors for ideas and feedback. Make sure you are sending materials to meaningful places. See who will accept digital press kits and digital review copies; more and more markets will. It’s often easier and more economical (and less risky, especially if you make your books by hand) to distribute digital marketing materials. That said, especially if you make your books by hand, you want to represent your books accurately in digital form by including photos and descriptions of how they are bound.

What are some of the differences between online chapbooks and print chapbooks? What are the benefits of each?

Carly Miller: While my press hasn’t ventured into chapbooks yet, we’ve had these conversations. Online would allow us to reach a larger audience, especially if the chapbook is available for free (think H_NGM_N Books and Sundress’s e-chaps). Printed chapbooks are such an experience, since the ones I own are that perfect size that fits so easily into my purse and make for that perfect lunchtime read. I know we’re leaning towards more of a book-arts approach with the chapbook, which isn’t currently possible with how large our anthologies are. We haven’t fully done the research to see what would be cheaper in terms of the printed chapbook to go with POD, or figured out the book-art approach, but we’re getting there.

Margaret Bashaar: A print chapbook will exist forever as an artifact. It will be a thing you can hold and touch and re-read and nibble on for as long as you want to. There is more freedom of design and obviously of material in a print chapbook. A print chapbook can be thrown at a rowdy audience member at a reading. As human beings in our current form, we read better on paper than on a screen. Can you tell I deal exclusively in print chapbooks?

An e-chapbook can be much more widely distributed. E-chapbooks have a much smaller overhead. E-chapbooks, once designed, do not need to be re-printed. They do not need you to spend hours and hours folding and binding them. There is less restriction on length with an e-book because you don’t have to force a staple through 13 sheets of paper.

I think we are still in a place where people take print chapbooks much more seriously than e-chapbooks, and while I don’t know if I agree with that notion, I do think it shows a certain commitment to a book to bring it into physical existence. Though if I’m being honest, I used to take that much more seriously than I do now, because lately a lot of presses are being funded by crowdfunding campaigns, and so it’s less a mark of willingness to put your ass on the line to put out a book in print now.

Juliet Cook: I personally prefer print chapbooks, visually and on a sensory level. I think they look and feel more unique and extra-special and one-of-a-kind and you can touch them and smell them and flip through their pages at your own pace.

I’m a big fan of online literary magazines, but when it comes to chapbooks, I definitely tend to be more positively drawn to print.

However, online chapbooks are more easily and widely accessible and thus could have a significantly wider potential audience.

M. Mack: We don’t publish e-books at Gazing Grain, but I teach them in my chapbooks courses. I think e-books can do really exciting things with design, and different people can have access to them. E-books are really great for use in classrooms. (If you want your print chapbooks to be used in classrooms, consider ISBNs or an ISSN to make bookstore ordering easier.) Print chapbooks can also do amazing things with book arts, of course. I consider chapbooks to be extremely intentional handmade objects. My favorite is when publishers make e-books of their sold-out limited edition handmade chapbooks, like Bloof and Big Lucks do.

What tips do you have on designing the layout of an issue or book?

Margaret Bashaar: So, you make friends with this really nice girl named Sarah when you’re both in 2nd grade and you stay friends for like, twenty years. And then it turns out that she is working for Hachette Book Group and wants to try her hand at book design, and you’re starting a press and she’s like “hey, can I do your books’ design?” and you’re like “that’s cool—I was just going to do it in Word or something” and then it turns out she’s amazing at it and that’s my advice.

Juliet Cook: I don’t have the best tips to offer. I’m a one-woman old school designer, who uses Microsoft Word to design my chapbooks’ innards AND covers and I’m not good at explaining how I do it, I just do it how I do it.

Margaret Bashaar: Okay I figured someone else might have some tips, but now that I see that we’re all sort of in the same position I’ll try to some up with something more practical.

1. Teach yourself Microsoft Publisher. It’s not the best program, but if you have the Microsoft Office suite, you’ll have Publisher and you won’t need to spend any additional money on a special program. Plus, unlike Word, it’s a program that is actually meant to be used for things like pamphlet and book layout. It is not a difficult program to figure out (I figured it out on my own in like, an hour).
2. If you have some extra scratch, spring for Adobe Illustrator/InDesign/Photoshop. They are expensive, but I am told also totally worth it if you have the money.
3. Don’t be afraid to do things simply or with old school methods. Sometimes a clean, simple, text-based cover design is better than a fancy pants crowded looking one, and sometimes photocopying is totally the way to go.

M. Mack: I’m also not that helpful here, because I have been designing magazines and books since I was in high school, and for a long while I designed publications sort of professionally for a nonprofit. But, along that time I had to learn new programs and new ways of doing things, and it is possible to teach yourself design programs. If you’re starting from scratch, look for elements in books you admire. Choose a program and learn it. The internet is amazing. I once taught myself to code an e-book with Lynda.com in a weekend. Margaret makes a good point about affordability. I use Adobe because it is what I have always used. Try out different programs that are available to you. Think about what will suit your needs. Adobe has pitfalls not only in cost but also in availability (which is related to cost). Our editors are all over the United States, and sharing design files is nearly impossible. So, think about what your needs are (and will be) before committing to a program.

How do you determine fair pricing for cover art?

Margaret Bashaar: I figure out what I can afford, and fair price is probably like three times that. Honestly, Hyacinth Girl Press is infinitely lucky in that Sarah Reck, our co-founder, is such an amazing designer. When I’m dealing with an outside artist I am as up front with them as I can possibly be about our budget restrictions and I don’t ever try to force anyone to lower their prices for me. If it’s not a fit due to finances, it’s not a fit. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. Often, if I really have my heart set on a particular artist I will offer to buy the original piece for my personal collection, and that usually moves things along, but that also depends on my personal finances being in a place where I can buy art.

Juliet Cook: I highly value visual art, but I can’t afford to pay an artist a hundred bucks to design a cover for me, or even fifty bucks. In my own experience, some visual artists value poetry just as much as some poets value visual art, and they’re excited enough about having their art appear on the forum of a poetry chapbook and being credited in the book and receiving a free copy of the book that they don’t require monetary payment. I’ve paid some artists a small amount (in addition to crediting them and giving them a copy of the book) to create a new piece of art specifically for a cover. I’ve also purchased an existing piece of art from an artist in appreciation for being given permission to use that existing piece of art on the cover of a book. I’ve also used parts of some of my own visual art creations as cover art for some Blood Pudding Press chapbooks.

M. Mack: Unfortunately, most of us pay what we can afford. My only advice it to make sure that you are upfront with the artist with whatever your price is. You don’t want to put yourself in the position where an artist has said yes, but you can’t afford the fee. Make sure the author knows what the budget is and can include it in any conversations they have with artists. If you’re seeking permissions to reprint artwork, have a conversation with the author about budgets and expectations before you seek them. You might get lucky, but it’s best for everyone to have all of the information.

How do you make the most of writing conferences like AWP? How can you network at a conference without going overboard?

Carly Miller: This last AWP in Los Angeles allowed us to connect directly with our contributors and give them the book right away, which allowed us to not only thank them in person for contributing their work, but save on shipping costs once we got home. For networking, it really is just remembering that people are people. I’ve been to AWPs where I’ve had to stand behind a pillar to calm myself down before meeting some of my favorite poets, but keeping in mind that people who approach your table or have already contributed to your press have some connection with you, it allows the nerves to settle. I’ve taken advantage of book signings and making my small talk there versus chasing someone down when they’re clearly on their way to something (and yes, I’ve just run into people and walked with them wherever they were going, too). Really, just be yourself and if you see that person you want to connect with, fantastic—and if not, then hey, there’s always email.

Margaret Bashaar: I’m really bad at not going overboard at conferences, but not so much with networking as with running myself ragged selling chapbooks. I tend to spend 100% of my time at AWP and other festivals/conferences at my bookfair table talking to people about my press. I honestly enjoy doing so, but I tend to exhaust myself. I’ve found that, as an editor, the best thing I can do for my press is be present at my bookfair table as much as possible. My co-editor has never attended a bookfair or festival with me, so I am the sole representative of my press at these events. I spend money to be there, so I want to make sure I make the most of it, and that means pushing myself that extra mile to be personable and chatty and helpful. I usually take a few days off from socializing afterwards to recover, and that helps a lot.

M. Mack: Network wherever you are. Always have materials for your press with you. I embroider Gazing Grain Press tote bags for our editors to carry. I think of myself as a walking book fair table. Speaking of which, walk around bookfairs where you are exhibiting and introduce yourself to your contemporaries. If you’re walking around with everything you need if a conversation comes up, it is easier to enjoy the conference as an individual as well as an editor. I don’t think staying static at a table is necessarily the best way to promote your press. You’re also (most likely) paying your own way to the conference, so I think it is just as important to set boundaries and make sure that you are fulfilling your own goals for the event (such as seeing panels related to your latest poetry project) as it is to promote your press. Often, these things can go hand in hand. I like to introduce myself to judges of our contests after they speak on panels. I get to hear the panel, and I get to say, “Hi, thanks so much, you’re great.”

What would you say writers expect from the editors of a new press?

Carly Miller: I think writers expect professionalism in all forms. Each interaction needs to be professional and show that the work is being handled with care. I think writers want to see that the press is making an effort to get their work out into the world, and having the work presented in a way that is really beautiful (as in the physical object of the book via design, even when it’s online) and shows a sense of community-building via reviews and marketing efforts.

Margaret Bashaar: I feel like expectations of new presses vary, and I feel as though editors more or less drive that expectation with how we present ourselves on our websites and in our initial communications with writers who want to work with us/we want to work with. It’s hard to say “this is what writers expect across the board.” I mean, I know what I, personally want from a press—I want the editor to reply to my communications in a decently timely manner, I want to be kept updated on the potential timeline for my book or chapbook’s release, I want to have open communication and conversation about my and the editor’s expectations and plans for the book and its release and promotion. So I would say the most important thing is communication.

Juliet Cook: I think that depends on the writer and the press. For me as a writer, I’m fairly open, but I would like a press to offer me a tentative time frame of WHEN the book will be published (and offer me updates if that time frame changes), a reasonable amount of free copies of the book with additional copies at a discount rate, and a reasonable amount of help promoting the book. Since that’s what I desire as a writer, that’s what I aim for as an editor too.

M. Mack: Excellence. Writers should expect excellence and respect. If you can’t prove yourself with an existing catalog, you have to prove yourself with the way you treat your authors and your books in process. I think the best way to do that is to be lovely to work with while you create lovely books.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of beginning a new press?

Carly Miller: It’s the moment the books fall into our hands. As soon as we have them, we’re able to send them to our contributors and say “thank you” all over again. It’s really the vision coming to life and seeing how excited our contributors are about the book, and wanting to share that excitement with others.

Margaret Bashaar: I haven’t started a new press in seven years, but I think the most rewarding thing for me when I first started HGP was probably interacting with each of my poets in person for the first time. I do my best to actually meet the people who I have published face to face, and it’s almost always a really fantastic, heartwarming thing.

Juliet Cook: Feeling like you’re being a personal part of the poetry community. Feeling like you’re creating what is meaningful to you and making a small but powerful difference to a few others.

Spending some personal time and energy and creative attention and genuine care focusing on other poets you appreciate and admire and helping their voices be heard.

Receiving meaningful tidbits of positive feedback and support directed at your press’s chapbooks’ innards as well as their design.

Having a few people who seem to actually care about and appreciate what you do and genuinely enjoy it.

Being your true creative self and helping to share a few other true creative selves.

M. Mack: The most rewarding part of running a press is directly contributing to the publishing landscape. Sometimes this also feels daunting. Pay attention when you feel uncomfortable and see if you need to make changes. One of my favorite parts is when people handle our books and ephemera and explore them. I like exhibiting for this reason—showing people how things are made. It is also really great when I bring a Gazing Grain text to one of my classes as an example of a book form and my students get excited about it. One of the most fun things for us is that Gazing Grain is a project of Fall for the Book literary festival, so we launch our chapbooks at Fall for the Book’s two annual events. Our authors and runners-up come to read, and our local editors get to present the brand new book or ephemera to the authors and get to know them. This is another good thing about going to big events like AWP, getting to see your authors and put together events for them.

___

Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. She is the author of more than thirteen poetry chapbooks, most recently including POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press, 2013), RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaboration with Robert Cole called MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), and a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Cook’s first full-length poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX in 2008 and her second full-length poetry book, Malformed Confetti, is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. In addition to her writing, Cook creates other art too, such as semi-abstract painting/collage art hybrid creatures. She is also the editor of Blood Pudding Press (poetry chapbooks in print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (a poetry focused online blog style lit mag). You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

Margaret Bashaar is the founding editor of Hyacinth Girl Press with co-editor Sarah Reck. Her first book, Stationed Near the Gateway, was published by Sundress Publications in 2015. She has published three chapbooks; Rungs, written with Lauren Eggert-Crowe (Grey Book Press, 2015), Letters From Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press, 2011), and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press, 2009), and has a fourth chapbook, Some Other Stupid Fruit, forthcoming from Agape Editions. Her work has also appeared in or is forthcoming from journals such as The Southeast Review, Rhino, New South, So to Speak, and Copper Nickel, among others. She hails from Pittsburgh where she co-runs the annual arts anarchy event, FREE POEMS, with Rachael Deacon, and works to destroy classism in the literary world in whatever way she can.

Carly Joy Miller’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a finalist for the Stadler Fellowship. She is a contributing editor for Poetry International and a founding editor of Locked Horn Press.

M. Mack is a genderqueer poet, editor, and fiber artist in Virginia. Ze is the author of Theater of Parts (Sundress Publications, 2016) and three chapbooks: Mine (Big Lucks Books, forthcoming 2016), Imaginary Kansas (dancing girl press, 2015), and Traveling (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015). Hir work has appeared in such places as cream city review, Hot Metal Bridge, Menacing Hedge, and The Queer South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). Mack is a founding co-editor of Gazing Grain Press, an assistant editor for Cider Press Review, and the monster maker behind What Is Reality Plushies.

Tag: poetry

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